Sensors, such as pressure sensors can be placed near the tip of a catheter. Prior art instrumented catheters include those claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,902,248, U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,423, U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,986, U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,297, U.S. Pat. No. 4,809,704, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,348 that are herein included by reference in their entirety.
The current art catheters, however, can be expensive, lack measurement fidelity, be complex to set-up and/or require cleaning, sterilization & maintenance between uses. For example, reusable catheters cost around $1000 while single use fluid-filled catheters with low enough cost to be disposable can lack performance. Systems and techniques for producing instrumented catheters that are inexpensive are needed. Aspects of the embodiments directly address the shortcomings of current technology by using packaging technologies that can be used in mass production. A further benefit is that the advanced packaging leads to sensors that are more robust than those used in the current art.